Farewell to Franco Sarnari, Scicli Group artist and among the greatest in the Hyblean area in the last 40 years

Artist Franco Sarnari has passed away at the age of 89 at his home in Gerrantini. In the 1980s he laid the foundations for the Scicli Group project with his friend Piero Guccione, and gave great impetus to the Vitaliano Brancati Movement in Scicli, with its many activities and events for the environment and in support of emerging artists. He is considered among the greatest cultural animators of theHyblean area in the last four decades.

Born in Rome on March 3, 1933, Sarnari had chosen to live in Sicily in the early 1970s. In Sicily he immersed himself in an elsewhere lit by a light “thanks to which he had the sensation of seeing colors he could not see in the city.” And here he continued his artistic journey as an “anticonsequential painter” who over half a century pursued a work of aesthetic rigor.

Among the most significant moments of his artistic work were the founding of the collective il Girasole (Rome, 1964), the great anthological exhibition at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara in 1970 that consecrated him to Italian painting, his friendship with Schifano and Guttuso, with whom he shared years of political-cultural activity, the various international prizes for the 1975 Cartella Frammenti, and again the three invitations to the Venice Biennale, with the presence, with a personal room in the Italian Pavilion at that of 1988.

Constantly followed by critics such as Lorenza Trucchi and Giovanni Carandente, just to name a few, in Sicily he continued his pictorial research, strongly innovating his languages and contributing to the growth of the Sicilian art system and economy. As early as the mid-1970s, the choice to live with his partner Piera in the House in Gerrantini, the birth of their children and a rediscovery of Nature were some of the stimuli for a new research.

In the 1990s, the attention of national critics returns strongly for the cycle Cancellazioni, which to date is the most important together with that of Frammenti; then from the early 2000s the work on Neri begins, underlining the activity of experimentation, confirmed and appreciated by international critics.

In 2021 he began with his sons the work of theFranco Sarnari Archive. After a long period of re-reading the many documents and reorganizing the collection, in April 2022, he shared with the most devoted audience the opening of the exhibition on his life, with which the official Archive opened.

Farewell to Franco Sarnari, Scicli Group artist and among the greatest in the Hyblean area in the last 40 years

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.